


Scentsational

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Times, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scents and sense don't always go together, and the confusion doesn't always belong to the Sentinel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scentsational

**Author's Note:**

> A little off-beat oddity that had its start in real life....heh. Thanks, Diana DeShaun for last moment fast beta work.

## Scentsational

by rac

Author's webpage: <http://enook.net/hl/rac/rac.htm>

Author's disclaimer: No monetary profit made, just some snickers. And m&m's.

* * *

Scentsational  
By rac / August 29, 2000  
<rac@enook.net>

I hadn't heard a thing. The day'd been long and hot, and I'd come home and crashed in my room. Didn't hear the door or the keys or his footsteps, but smack out of the blue, I woke up and knew Jim was home. 

It was the oddest damn thing: all of a sudden I could smell him. 

Yeah, he smelled ripe, really, really ripe from a nice, long run around the neighborhood, and today it'd been one of those rare days, hot with loads of sunshine. Fucking gorgeous outside, and still pretty damn hot even now at seven in the evening. 

Thing is, my room's a fair piece from his, and I could smell him like he was standing right in front of me. 

It was a clean, honest odor. So far, we'd eaten pretty healthy this week, no red meat that I can remember, and man, what's inside your body makes a hell of a big impact on what comes out of it, in any shape or form. 

This was a sharp, pungent scent, salt-tinged and musky. But clean, so fucking clean and so very, very Jim. 

And I smelled it thirty feet and one floor away. 

Before I could think straight, I pushed through the french doors and walked through the kitchen and living room and up those stairs, and stood at the top of the stairs like a dope, just staring at him, staring at him standing there in his jockeys. White jockeys--he's so damn military--standing and wiping his tee-shirt over his sweaty head. 

"Hey, Chief. What's up?" He flashed me a grin, all white teeth and blue eyes against his tanned face, and damned if all of a sudden it hit me exactly what was up. 

Me. _I_ was up. I was up and getting more up with each breath I took. Every sweat-scented breath of Jim I breathed in. 

"What a fantastic run. No rain, beautiful sky, hot...just like you're always moaning for all winter long. I think I did ten miles, hit streets I haven't been down in months. God, I feel great," Jim rambled as he rooted around in his drawers for clean clothes, gathering tee-shirt and shorts and another pair of jockeys. "What a great day. You have a good day, Chief?" 

Time warp. Or alternate reality, yeah. Something like that. Like that episode of Star Trek where Kirk beams into an alternate universe, and Spock is there, but...everybody's different. 

It was the only explanation. Jim was rambling--rambling, man, the guy never strings together more than a few syllables at a time unless under duress--and he was _happy_. A grin stretched across his face, and he hadn't picked up his dirty clothes; hell no, they were slung all over the floor where they had fallen and were _not_ in the laundry basket. 

And me? I smelled him from _way_ too far away, like a damn sentinel. Getting a woodie because I can smell my roommate's sweat. 

And he still hadn't noticed that I hadn't said a word. Me, speechless, that's a switch. But so's this, I mean, it's not everyday I felt like I'd been hit with a two-by-four and I was about ready to come in my pants because my best friend smelled like a ton of sweat. 

_Sweat_. I mean, if I was gonna get turned on, you'd think it'd be his six-pack rippling above his jockeys, or the pecs and lats flexing and twitching as he moved around the room. Or even that gorgeous, tight ass. But oh no, it's his goddamn _sweat_. 

All I wanted to do was bury my face in his armpit and breathe deep enough that his smell permeated into every cell of my body. 

Now how bizarre is that? 

Jim stopped and made a face, his nose flaring out. "There is a shower downstairs that has my name on it, Chief, so outta my way unless you want to be grossed out." 

He plowed forward with his clean clothes in his hands and came to an abrupt halt because I hadn't budged. 

"Yo, Sandburg?" He raised his eyebrows at me. "You planning on sinking roots into that step?" 

He quirked his lip at me to let me know he was joking, and I shook my head like I was coming out of a trance. 

"Sorry, Jim." 

I slid over against the wall, and Jim lifted his arm and hit me on the top of my head with his clothes. 

"That's okay, Chief. If you want to squat on my top step, it's weird, but okay. Just keep the noise level down when I go to sleep tonight, got it?" 

He breezed on by me in a whirl of eau-de-Ellison and I had to clutch the damn railing for fear I'd pitch down the steps headlong after him trying to sniff at it. 

He'd already gone into the bathroom by the time I slunk down the steps like an idiot. I heard the toilet flushing so I knew I wasn't interrupting anything _important_ when I knocked on the door. 

"Hey, Jim?" 

"Yeah, Chief?" 

I heard the shower come on, the pipes squealing as he adjusted the temperature, then the shower curtain rings making screeching noises as he pulled the curtain shut. 

I pushed open the door and entered the room. "Hey, Jim..." 

" _What_ , Sandburg?" 

"I, uh...I, uh..." 

"Spit it out, kid." 

Insanity. Total, fucking insanity. But my clothes were off in less than ten seconds and I saw this hand--mine--reach out and pull back the shower curtain, and this leg--mine--step over the edge of the tub and then I was face to face with Jim, water in his eyes, water in my eyes, and his eyes were pretty damn wide right then, poor guy, that water must have stung like the devil. I don't have a clue what I looked like, but I know I did my share of staring at what stood before me. 

I expected an explosion, but all I got was this wide-eyed, cool stare from those big, cool blues as Jim stood utterly still and said, "What the fuck are you doing, Sandburg?" 

So there we were, water blasting down on our stare-off, naked at one pace. I don't think he could miss the fact that my gun was cocked and ready, either. 

I'd never felt as naked as I did right then. Is this how Jim felt with me when I'd poked and prodded and stripped his psyche raw? Totally exposed and helpless? 

"I-uh...Do you think that living together for any length of time encourages traits and tendencies to rub off on each other?" I blurted out. 

God help me, he looked down my body at that, and I felt it like a caress against my skin and gave a violent shiver. His nostrils flared out, scenting me, and his pupils widened until his eyes were more navy than sky-colored. 

"Rub off on each other," he repeated, watching me like a cat watches a mouse. 

Hot damn. I shivered at the way the words came out of his mouth. "I could smell you." I shivered again and pushed wet hair out of my face. "When you came in, I could smell you. All the way in my room. I, I want to smell it before you wash it away." My face burned hot. I could feel it flaming, could almost see the steam rising where water splattered on it. 

He stared down at me with that wide gaze, and I couldn't tell a single thought that was streaking through his mind behind those darkened eyes until they shifted, and then he shifted, too, and held out his arms a little bit and said softly, "Knock yourself out." 

Taking that one step forward was harder than stepping naked into the tub, because I was aware, I was thinking, and those sentinel eyes of his were watching me, seeing everything. Ah, geez, I bet he was listening to my heart racing. Naked, naked, naked... 

I scrunched up my eyes and leaned forward, wanting that smell a lot more than my fear could hold me back. My nose bumped his shoulder, and I reached out without thinking and grasped both of his arms, feeling slick skin and rock hard muscles under my grip as I adjusted my face and--oh shit yeah. Yeah. THAT was the scent that I wanted. 

Without further hesitation, I buried my nose near Jim's armpit, the water nearly drowning me until he did a little two-step dance and we backed around until I wasn't getting the brunt of the shower in my face. 

Then I groaned, because instead, I got the brunt of Jim in my face. My arms dove around him and I pulled him to me, musk and wet skin and muscles and all. I wanted him plastered against me, hard. I wanted my nose full of his scent and my body squished by his. I wanted him to absolutely flatten me. 

Flatten me. Hard. 

Even as I pushed against him, feeling his legs, his belly, his arms around me, I flashed on the earliest memories of him pressing me to the wall, passionate, heated and semi-hard. The feeling of him under me on the street, every nerve ending doing double-time as the truck rolled over us. I remembered the smell of him that day, from the heat and an abundance of nerves, sweat lightly scenting his clothes. 

I hadn't expected it when he walked in that door that day, I'd written him off when he hadn't shown up sooner. But there he'd been, and suddenly I was alive, I was fucking _alive_ and things were more vivid than I ever remembered them being. I was present, man, fully _present_ and everything just seemed to take on this unbelievable intensity. Everything: smells and sound and colors. 

His smell, I imprinted on his smell that first day. And I never knew it. 

Right from the start, I wanted him right from the start. I did a hell of an obfuscation on myself about the whole damn thing. Gave myself that whole stern objectivity lecture in my head and swallowed it whole, burying this part of me underneath it all, not wanting to lose the Sentinel of my dreams because I'd literally fucked us up. 

"Jesus, Jim." 

He shifted again, and this time I felt something else, felt it pushing in against my stomach like a hard, hot stone. 

"What was that you were saying about rubbing off on each other, Chief?" he said against my ear, nosing his way past the dripping hair. 

He rolled his hips and my knees nearly buckled as our bodies connected in ways I'd never, ever allowed myself to think about. But I was thinking about them now, making up for lost time, licking and sucking at Jim's skin like it was a gourmet meal from Maxine's. 

His hands grabbed the sides of my head and pulled my face away from where I had attached to his chest. I looked up and saw blue fire before he leaned down and placed his mouth over mine, and I fell inside that mouth, the mouth that had closed up on me more often than not over the past years, but he was making up for it now. Making up for it, opened up so wide, letting me in and letting me know him in ways I hadn't dreamed of. 

Jim. Jim. This is Jim, I thought, dizzy and lightheaded from lack of oxygen. He finally pulled back and I heaved in a breath, staring at the mouth I'd just been slurping like there was no tomorrow. "I'm losing my objectivity here, man." 

He just snorted at me and pulled me closer. "I'd say your objectivity was a goner when you were standing at the top of the stairs with that boner, Chief." 

"Fuck." I stared at him as the water poured over us. 

He got this funny grin on his face. "You want to?" He leaned in and nuzzled my ear. "You want to fuck...me?" 

In the five seconds of rational thought before my body went nova, I acknowledged I'd been a goner three years back and had completely ignored it. 

Better late than never. 

OoOoO 

The clock said 11:14 and the place still roasted from the heat of the day. 

Or maybe that was merely me roasting from the combined heat of our bodies--I lay draped across Jim like he was a featherbed. 

I knew he was awake, I could feel the tickling trail of his finger on my back, down my spinal column to the top of my butt and dragging back up again, swirling around underneath the back of my hair on my neck. 

I felt boneless, as if the heat we'd generated had liquefied my entire skeleton. The only things I could move were my eyeballs and the occasional, sporadic brain cell. Everything else had turned to mush, shut down from an orgasmic power surge. 

Oh, and my nose still worked. Everything smelled like Jim now, me, the sheets, everything. I snuffled in a deep breath of it and smiled, and heard Jim rumble in his chest. 

"Get your fill, Sandburg, because as soon as we get up from this bed, these sheets are history. You may have a jones for this stink, but I sure as hell don't." 

I rubbed my face around in his chest and sighed. "Three years I held this off... You know, I was remembering...right from the time we met, I experienced heightened sensory input. Then earlier tonight, I smelled you, man, smelled you and it woke me up and all you'd done is walk in the front door." I propped my chin up on his chest and stared down at his face as I scratched a hand along his five o'clock shadow, listening to the sandpaper sound it made. "Seriously, I wonder if there's some kind of special sentinel-guide thing happening here." 

Jim stretched underneath me, and I undulated on top of him, riding his body like waves in an ocean. "Well, Blair, I don't know. I can tell you that there was a pretty nice cross-breeze coming through the balcony doors when I got home, because I stood there, letting it cool me down a little. And, you gotta admit, I was pretty potent. As for the heightened sensory input..." Jim pulled my head down to his and kissed me, running his tongue over my swollen lips. "I think it's more a Jim-Blair thing than anything else. And after we take a real shower, I'd like it to happen again. What do you say, Chief?" He nuzzled against my face. "It's my turn this time to do the scent-thing." He stuck a tongue out and lapped at my neck. "And the taste thing. All over. ALL over." 

I shuddered as his breath gusted across the wet spot he'd made and thought about how I'd gone seriously native. Irreparably native. 

"I say...oh yeah, sensational." 

I think I'll have to turn this into a life-long study. Going native is the only way to survive. 

fini 

feedback to rac@enook.net :-) 


End file.
